


You Be the Anchor That Keeps My Feet On the Ground

by FlashFlashFlash



Series: Ohio Is For Pete and Patrick [2]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Baby, Fluffy Ending, Holiday Season, M/M, New Year, Post Mpreg, Tags Are Hard, Teething, babies are hard work tho, chicago suburbs, pete loves his family, tiniest bit of past angst if you use a microscope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 03:06:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17256434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlashFlashFlash/pseuds/FlashFlashFlash
Summary: Four months in, Pete is beginning to realise that fatherhood is hard. Really, really hard. He misses the silence through which he can hear the voices in his head. He misses being alone with Patrick, misses touching him and kissing him all over. Pete misses his old life, last summer when they had no responsibilities. He might even miss last spring, when they lived for the soul purpose of living while they could.All that said, Pete wouldn't change it for the world.





	You Be the Anchor That Keeps My Feet On the Ground

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! Happy New Year everyone! I'm pretty happy with this, but, once again, I apologise for the lack of proofreading. 
> 
> (Its an important thing to note that if you haven't done it before, sterilising baby bottles can get real boring, real quick.) 
> 
> Thank you all,  
> A x

Pete breathes out a breath he didn't know he was holding, letting it swirl gracefully away from his face and blending into the cold Chicago air. It felt good to be out in the freshest of air, bundled up in his trusty winter coat and woolly scarf-hat-gloves combo, to be finally alone in the silence of the Midwestern suburbs, on the first evening of the new year. Night fell hours before, casting the artificial orange hue of street lamps as the primary source of light Pete had to walk by on his little excursion, and chilling the air even beyond the snow which dressed the buildings around him. 

The truth is that Pete was glad, really, really glad to be out. He needed time on his own to think, to hear his own thoughts one by one, rather than all at once for a short while, and then radio silence for hours on end afterwards. Rosa had cried a lot the last week or so, because her teeth are starting to come in, and the wooden teething ring she has is trying its best, but it's not quite doing the job. Until the twenty-second of the month, Pete had been at work most of the time, either cleaning at the elementary school, bagging groceries in a local shop, or bar tending for the odd shift here and there down at a club further into the city that FOB played a few times before Rosa was born. 

But, everything is different now. It's different because, first off, Pete is home now, until the new year, so he gets to spend time with his family, which, obviously, he is grateful for. It's just that Rosa cries and cries and cries and cries and sometimes it can take hours to put her down, especially when it's the teething bothering her and she's already fully dosed on baby Calpol. The crying is starting to get into Pete's head, like an ear worm burrowing it's way into his skin, like a tattoo determined to leave its mark. 

He decided at around six AM on his first day off that he couldn't do what Patrick does, being alone with her all day, every day, based purely on the fact that he was awake at six AM, stirred by the cries of a baby wanting milk, and it's a fact of life that nobody should be up before nine AM unless they never went to bed. He remembers lying there and feeling relieved that Patrick was used to this, the constant caring, feeding, changing, rocking, because he so very deeply wasn't used to it at all, but then Patrick rolled over in bed. He had groaned and sounded a little grizzly, complaining quietly to himself that his head hurt, trying to sit up a little but flopping back down almost instantly due either to exhaustion or faintness, and then he had asked that one, terrifying question: 

"Hey, Pete... Can you get her?" 

It's not that Pete doesn't love Patrick, and it's not that he doesn't love Rosa. It's not that at all. It's that he works his ass off every hour that God sends him, and his body and mind are tired, but he forgot how tired Patrick (and Rosa, for that matter) must be, too. Patrick is about sixteen weeks post-partum, give or take a few days, and he's still not quite back to his normal self: he's still toting around a little (lot) bit of baby weight, his hips are (irreversibly) wider, his stretch marks are yet to fade, and his brain is still trying to compute that he is a mother. If Pete's being perfectly honest with himself, he doesn't think Patrick will ever be like he was before, and that's not a bad thing, just... different. He's not a spirited teenager anymore, he's a mom, and he is a mom before he is anything else. 

That's why Pete obliged, hauling himself from the bed with great effort and minimal complaint, to tend to their child. He did it because Patrick does it every time he's not there, because his hips will never be the same again, and because those stretch marks on his stomach, beautiful as they are, serve as a striking reminder of the physical and emotional trauma Patrick has experienced in the last year. 

What began as a few menial tasks here and there, the odd change, or burp, washing dishes, getting groceries, making the beds, soon snowballed into a job of its own. By the end of his first day's holiday, Pete was a living, working part of the very heart of Patrick's motherhood. He served a purpose mainly in accommodating Patrick's wishes and wants for Rosa, in looking after Patrick when he forgot to take care of himself, in being a secondary caregiver, all in all. This was how Pete had imagined it, months ago as he pondered their future together as a family, and it was not nearly as bad as he had thought it might be. 

Every evening, just as the days Pete worked, he and Patrick bathed Rosa together, patted her down with their softest baby pink towel, and Pete would take her off for a skin to skin nap on his chest. He treasured his time alone with Rosa, because, though he loved Patrick ever so dearly, that was his chance to bring her into his world, just for a little while. For an hour or so, she was completely and entirely his, despite the red-ish tinge shining through her dark hair, and the milkiness of her skin. She came with him wherever he went, be it Halloween Town, Narnia or the Hundred Acre Woods. She traipsed across fantasy land strapped to his chest, battled his demons for him, and warmed him in the dark by campsite fires in his crippling imagination. 

Pete loved their time together more than anything else, and, as much as he cherished his hours spent with Patrick in his arms, it was the first time he had ever truly felt at peace.

All this peace at once was scary, though. It was a shock to his system, it rattled his very core, and it spun his mind like a spinning top. Even in the silence there was a faint murmur of doubt, but he could ignore it, push it aside. 

That's why Pete had to come outside, for a walk. He needed time to listen to his own thoughts again, even if they all talked over each other, and spoke in a language he didn't understand. He needed to feel the outside air touch the face he hasn't shaved for days, feel his arms without the weight of a baby, take a breath that Patrick hasn't already breathed for him. 

The sheer volume of organisation involved in running the operation that was Teen Mom Patrick was immense. Everything had to be laid out the night before they went anywhere, spare cloth nappies and baby gros and mittens and hats and socks, bottles and dummies and bibs and teething rings. The formula had to be mixed with extreme precision and speed, something Pete just couldn't do as well as Patrick could, along with the tediousness of bottle sterilisation. Patrick needed spares, too: spare shirts and jumpers in case the muslin slipped and the baby was sick down his back, spare pants and boxers just in case his unreliably damaged, post-baby pelvic floor (or lack thereof) decided to act up. 

Patrick still wanted to be like his friends, and on some levels he was. He still wore jeans and band tees and huge sneakers, he still knew how to rock out and sometimes he even drank beer. It's just that his jeans are all "maternity" and his band tees pull tight over the baby-less bump and his huge sneakers have to be slightly less huge to avoid the laces getting caught in the pram wheels, and he had to be careful drinking beer because he didn't want to taint what little breast milk he could pump for Rosa. He was still everything he was a year ago, but a million other things on top of that, too. 

Pete loved them both, so, so much. He loved Mommy Patrick possibly ten times as much as he loved Pregnant Patrick, because his heart tripled in size each day, and he couldn't even begin say how dear to him his daughter was, how much he longed to keep her this small forever, so that he could protect her from the outside world. He loved them, but all this weight on his heart was growing a little too much. He needed to step outside and breathe for a while, breathe in the world that he had lost to fatherhood, just to know that it was still there, waiting for him on the other side of this, whatever 'this' was. 

Pete walked all the way to the park where he used to drink and smoke with his high school friends. He looked at the slide he danced on during his first real high, and scoured the climbing frame for the cigarette burns he knew they bore. He took a slow, sad waltz over to the bench where he used to sit and drink all alone, after high school but before Patrick, when the whole world seemed to pulse in his ears. He thought about taking a trip over to the twenty-four hour off-license just a block away, reliving some old memories, but then Patrick's face flashed in his mind. There were tears on his cheeks, his eyes wide and swimming, of course, his bottom lip trembling. 

Pete couldn't do that to him. Not now. He couldn't go home, drunk, and dying on the inside, to his boyfriend and his daughter. They deserved more than that. 

So Pete turned around. 

He walked quickly, hands stuffed into his pockets and steadily gaining speed until, all of a sudden, he was running. He ran and ran, his eyes streaming tears right back into his sticky straightened hair. He ran all the way home. 

Pete rapped on the door, he hadn't brought his keys with him, and he shivered as cold air re-infiltrated his winter coat. He waited there, impatiently, on the doorstep, and then, after just a few seconds, he heard Patrick coming. 

When the door opened, Pete couldn't have spoken if he wanted to. Patrick has showered while he'd been out, or, maybe he'd taken a bath with Rosa, because his hair was damp like it had been washed and his face was red like he was just a little too hot. He was wearing his favourite pyjamas, a properly traditional, cream and mint green pinstripe set, that his mom had bought for Christmas. Rosa is strapped, facing in, to his chest in her grey bamboo sling, and Pete can see the top of her head, all thick hair and soft snores. 

It's beautiful to look at. 

"Pete, I'm so glad you're home, I'm so tired and she's only just gone down but I need to sterilise the bottles and pump, because of course the first time I actually have the opportunity to sleep at a normal adult time in four months, I'm leaking breast milk all over the place..." Patrick rambles, opening the door for Pete to come in. He obliges. "Can you do the bottles for me while I pump? I could lay her in my lap while I do it, or I could give her a bit of a feed, but she doesn't really need one unless she's hungry and I don't want to wake her up..." 

"Yes, babe," Pete says, taking off his coat and hanging it up. He steps forward and wraps his arms around Patrick's waist, their baby sandwiched between them. "Go pump some milk for her next feed, and I'll do the bottles. Don't stress," he soothes, pressing a kiss to Patrick's forehead. "I love you." 

"I love you, too," Patrick hums in response. "I was actually wondering, you know, if we could let my mom take her this Friday? Just for one night, so we could do something... together." 

"What do you suggest we do?" Pete smirks, reading their foreheads together. 

"Watch a movie, order in pizza, drink beer and have sex?" Patrick bites his lip a little. 

"Honey, not in front of the baby!" Pete giggles, and presses another kiss to Patrick's lips. 

"Do you want to? I know we haven't done it since before she was born, but I feel ready, now... Not sexy, but ready, like I might actually enjoy it." 

"I always want to with you, babe. I always will, because you're my favourite person ever. I used to think I knew everything, and that being on my own was best, but you... you changed everything." Pete knows it's cheesy, but he can't help himself. 

"Even when I'm about to make you sterilise the bottles?" 

"Even when you're about to make me sterilise the bottles."


End file.
